Do You Regret Skipping a Grade?

In My Humble Opinion
21

If my elementary school had exercised the option of having students skip grades, I may have done so. Grades intermingled constantly at the school, so it wasn’t like I would be separated from my friends forever afterwords. And I definitely could have handled, say, skipping fourth or fifth grade.

However, once I got into middle school, and especially now in high school, no, I wouldn’t skip a grade. My grade (11th currently) is VERY close-knit. I know everyone, whereas I know almost no seniors. I’ve been with all these students since sixth grade and it would be like leaving family.

22

Sorry; I forgot to add that I have a June birthday so I’m younger than pretty much anyone by the time May rolls around, anyway.

23

I wouldn’t skip a kid one year. There’s simply not enough difference in curriculum to make that much of a difference to justify the disruption.

My kid’s homeschooled and all over the place in terms of grades. His written output sucks as he has a writing disability and a spelling disability. He’s nominally in grade 5 but to be learning anything in class would need to be in at least grade 8. He’d be toast pure and simple, socially. That’s why he is homeschooled to avoid completely wasting his time academically. I don’t think he’d function well with his age peers either.

Sometimes you end up with sucky choice A and sucky choice B.

I was grade skipped a year when we changed countries. It was a total disaster for me and I have NO idea what my parents were thinking. I went from a tiny convent single sex school to a huge inner city school with a drug problem. It was awful, I think I could have managed one change or the other change but not both at once.

24

I skipped the second half of first grade and the first half of second grade by being moved from first to second mid-year. A more flexible curriculum would have been better, but way back then (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) everything was very lock-step. I read significantly earlier than kindergarten, which was supposed to be what you learned in first grade. So in first grade they didn’t know what to do with me. I would finish each little “See Jane run” book in about 5 minutes and be bored stiff all day. My mom tried keeping me home from school to let the others catch up, but I spent the day at home with my nose in a book and got further ahead the more I skipped school! The only option offered was to advance to second grade.

Two downsides: (1) I completely missed the part where they taught basic arithmetic and was dropped without warning into computations that I had no idea about. I still have trouble doing arithmetic in my head. Maybe I would have had that problem anyway, but I will always wonder. (2) It really sucks to be the youngest and skinniest and least “developed” in any way when you’re a pre-teen and teenager. This is true for girls as well as boys. It hurts to always be the very last one chosen for games.

On the other hand, it does not hurt at all at one’s 15 or 20-year HS reunion to STILL be the youngest and the skinniest!

Bottom line: Best course of action is a gifted/talented program geared toward the needs of each child. If that can’t be done, skipping a grade so one learns how to deal with a challenge instead of just coasting through is the next best thing.

25

It’s interesting to read different responses. I was 12 years old and pre-pubescent in grade 9 when some kids were 15 and 16 years old. If you’re 30 versus 33 it doesn’t matter much, but teenage years are dominated by the need to become an individual while fitting in socially, so an age difference of 1 year makes a big difference. I had to wait until I was 18 to find my group. I sort of dropped out and waited a year or two until I caught up with people of my own age and outlook.

It’s true that regular school was boring, but I don’t think the solution was to skip grades. Both gifted and disadvantaged students need attention to their individual situation, which is pretty hard to achieve in a large educational system.

26

Like AntaresJB, my only grade skipping was kindergarten, so I’m not sure if it counts or not. At any rate, I think it was a terrible move. Certainly it was not a problem academically – I did reasonably well in school throughout my school years, despite being a year younger than my peers. Even despite having skipped a grade, school was still not overly challenging most of the time. My primary difficulties were social – my social adjustment skills were (and still are) simply awful, and in first grade I was still probably at the social development level of one who is age 2 or 3. I remember temper tantrums being a big social problem that I had to work on even as late as first grade (and even much later). I really feel the kindergarten lessons learned about sharing and relating to others (and whatever else children learn in kindergarten – never having been there, I have no idea) would have been tremendously helpful to me for many years to come. It didn’t even help when entering puberty – I went through it so early that I was one of the first kids in my class to have to endure it despite being a year younger and being absolutely clueless as to what was going on.

27

Like AntaresJB (and, on preview, lel), I skipped most of Kindergarten and went into first, then second the following year. I was being homeschooled at the time, since we were overseas in a place where there was no English-speaking school available. My birthday is in April, and we moved back to the US when I was seven. I started third grade that fall.

I was socially inept all through elementary and junior high school, although whether because I was almost two years younger than most of the others in my class or because I wasn’t exposed to American culture until third grade, I don’t know. I was big for my age (I’m still big for my age ;)), and I was taller than almost everyone in my grade until I reached high school. When I did hit high school, I was determined to “fit in,” so I spent a lot of time pretending not to be smart and trying to be accepted by the “cool kids.” Given that I’d decided the stoners and juvenile delinquents were cool, that led me to make some pretty lousy decisions. There’s always the possibility that I’d have been as much of a spineless follower had I not been younger than the others, but I think a little more maturity would have helped.

When my older daughter was five and her dad and grandparents were trying to convince me to put her in first grade instead of kindergarten, I just thought of the hell my own mother went through when she had a 17-year-old high school graduate who felt she was fully adult and I resisted. At the end of my daughter’s first-grade year, when she had the chance to skip to third, she joined me in protesting, and she’s stayed with her age group ever since. Academically “gifted” children tend, for whatever reason, to be somewhat delayed socially and emotionally. I think it was a good thing to let her emotional maturity catch up to her academic ability, but if she gets the chance to skip any college, you can bet I’ll be rooting her on.

28

Yes, yes, and on second thought yes. The “benefit” of me skipping two grades was that age 14 I had to decide what college I wanted to go to, as well as choose my major (I was on early entry for an honors program), at 15 I graduated from HS, and a week after I turned 16 I started college at a very large state school, an experience I was not ready for at all. The upshot was that I ended up changing majors and almost left college entirely, because I couldn’t handle it.

My philosophy has always been that a 16-year-old college freshman has no benefits, and many disadvantages, compared with an 18-year-old college freshman. So, why do it? Because you’re “bored” in high school? I thought I was bored, but now that I look back, there were so many extracurricular things I wished I’d had the chance to do. I could have become a much-better rounded student, and been so much better prepared for college. I could have spent two more years with my high school friends. I hear so many people say to me, “Well, if you hadn’t skipped those two grades you wouldn’t have gotten into the scholars program/gone to graduate school/studied at Oxford.” How can they tell, exactly? In fact, if I’d stayed on at high school two more years, I would have had a much better idea of what I’d wanted to do as an undergraduate.

And the last thing I have to say about it–if you’re 20 when you finish your undergraduate degree like I was, and you go out to enter the job market, do you think you’ll have any advantages? Probably not.

29

Definately not.

I went to school one year early AND I skipped 4th grade AND I did what is meant to be one of the hardest curriculums on the planet( International Baccalaureate) AND I did 1st year University Mathematics during yr 12 and it still felt unchallenged by my entire schooling career.

I probably would have been happier up another grade. I tend to mingle with “older kids” anyway. Nearly all my university friends are either a year above me or would have no problems jumping up a year.

Luckily, I look old for my age (I’ve been called 21 at 16 and 25 at 17) so its never been that much of an issue as long as I don’t mention it.

30

There are more cons than pros in later life, but more pros than cons for the developmental stages of life.

My parents wanted to start me in school early, but state laws wouldn’t let them. I had taught myself how to read (somehow. . .?) and they couldn’t keep me entertained enough at home. I needed more stimuli. When I finally did get to start going to school, I went to a private school and basically “tested out” of first grade and Kindergarten (whatever that means). I have half a year of Pre-K and half a year of Transition (or Primer, as it was called) and then straight to 2nd grade.

I absolutely hated my parents when I was 10 years old in the sixth grade and everyone made fun of me for being so young. I wasn’t a teenager until I started my freshman year in high school, and needless to say I was the last person in my grade to start driving. I was younger than most of the kids in the class below me. I HATED IT IN HIGH SCHOOL!

But, I went on to college right after I graduated, turned 17 just after graduation, and functioned all right. I couldn’t buy cigarettes and I still can’t buy alcohol for myself (2.5 months! woohoo!). I still look very young – I got carded to go see a rated R movie not too long ago – and I can’t go out with my friends to bars and clubs and places that have the 21 age requirement, so I have missed out on some social activites. I, too, tend to mingle with older kids anyway (and have since I started school), but they are now off doing things I am restricted from doing.

Lack of social activites up until 21 is the biggest consequence to skipping grades as a youngster, I believe, but I am accustomed to only having a few friends, and most of the time they accomodate my age problem (nope, I do not, have not, and will not get a fake ID: when I wanted one no one would make me one, and now that I am so close, its not worth the risk). The only real advantage I can see is that, if I wanted to take a few years off (and join the Peace Corps, which I was planning on doing before anti-American terrorism kicked into high gear) before I started my career, I wouldn’t be starting any later than most people.

So, to answer the OP, even though it wasn’t my decision, I don’t regret it and I think it was the best thing my parents could have done at the time.

31

I skipped 2 grades in elementary school and hated it. I wasn’t mature enough to hang around with 6th graders when I was elementary school aged. They were very mean as middle schoolers almost always are… This was in the middle of the year.

The next year I went back to the age appropriate grade and was bored until high school. I went to a public high school for a year and didn’t learn anything then I went to a private school and worked at my own pace and graduated just after I turned 16 in middle of the school year.

I sometimes regret not doing the flexible curriculum thing when I had the opportunity when I was younger. I also regret not going directly to college after graduating instead of working shitty fast food/retail types of jobs and finally realizing it wasn’t going anywhere. By that time I was so disillusioned with public schools that I couldn’t imagine college being different. Luckily I grew out of it.

32

Primaflora said

This is the exact reason to skip grades. If there isn’t a justifiable difference in one grade to the next, there is a greater difference 2 or 3 grades ahead. However, as it stood for me, I don’t really remember learning much new after about 5th grade except for reading a few new books. So perhaps it would be better to completely revamp the school system rather than having it be some type of glorified daycare with hellishly underpaid staff.

33

I skipped first grade. I didn’t ever really feel like it mattered.

Sometimes I noticed I was just a bit younger than my classmates (like around age 16 when I was the last to start driving), but it wasn’t much of a hassle.

I don’t think it was a problem at all.

And now, at 29, it makes zero difference.

34

I skipped grade three. It did play merry hell with my social life until high school, but I made enough good friends in high school and at university that I don’t regret it now.

35

I regret not being skipped a grade. I had a serious opportunity to skip Grade 2 but the principal of the school (who had a bit of a personal vendetta against my family) vetoed it, saying I wouldn’t be able to handle it emotionally. Of course, the reason I was such a nervous wreck was because all the kids in my grade were such little shits to me all the time (I come from a very small town, therefore same kids each year). The next grade up wasn’t a paradise or anything, but they actually tried to look out for me a little. I ended up taking Grade 12 physics in Grade 11 anyway, and getting the best grade in the class, so I definitely could have handled it.

36

I’d definitely agree with FranticMad and Duke – the costs in your social life are too great.

Like several others above, I started very early and was two years younger than my classmates for the entire time I was in school. Probably a good thing, since I was able to escape my family and go to college just after I turned 16, but there were a lot of negatives. Basically, I was the shortest and youngest in all of my classes for my entire childhood, I couldn’t get dates in High School, I had to constantly fight implicit suspicions that I was too immature, I had to endure a larger share of poundings (when I was in New York), and, rather humiliating, I couldn’t take Driver’s Ed until the last semester of my senior year. The acceleration in my studies was definitely good, but I was pretty maladjusted socially.

I’d definitely not recommend it – if the child is smart, (s)he’ll end up in accelerated classes and rise to the top anyway, but will get the benefit of easier socialization, which seems to take on monumental proportions in junior high and high school.

37

I didn’t skip a grade in a formal sense, but after 3rd grade, I entered an all-day gifted program at a different school. For the most part, it was FABULOUS. I was suddenly reading interesting books, writing interesting pieces, doing fun experiments, you name it. And most of that involved jumping from typical 3rd-grade level studies to much higher.

The only problem in the jump was math. When I left third grade, as I recall, we had just finished learning long division. I was good at math in third grade. Not a prodigy or anything, but competent. When I switched to the gifted program, the 4th graders there were deep into fractions, and I was wholly at sea. I never really recovered from that: I was too proud to admit that I didn’t understand it, and thus never nailed those basics before moving onto more complicated things. I sucked at math from fourth grade on.

So, I don’t regret the switch at all. For the most part, it was the best thing my parents and teachers could have done for me. But the math thing… I really wish I’d expressed how lost I was, and gotten help with it.

38

I am resentful because I never found school challenging at all, and the schools I attended did not allow one to skip grades. Thus I spent a year of my life in kindergarden and first grade “learning” to read when I could already read and write quite fluently and do basic math by the time I was about 4 years old. I could have finished school at LEAST two years before I did.

39

Skipped 2nd. Didn’t have problems at the time paritally since my best friend skipped with me. It occaisionally was difficult in high school, but only when people found out, and since I had moved and switched schools after 7th grade, most didn’t know unless they asked. Sure, I got picked on, but because I was a chubby geek, not because I was a young chubby geek.

Now, I’m very glad I did. Since I was in a split class for 1st grade with 2nd graders, I picked up what they were learning, and 2nd grade was boring. So, now it’s like I’ve got a head start in life. I mean, a year’s not a big deal, but it’s a year sooner that I was out in the real world and not in school.

40

Boy, does that ring a bell; I remember the teacher giving me a big stack of those things to keep me busy for some reason, and I read them and gave them back and said, “What should I do now?” and she had no idea.

I didn’t skip a grade, but started a year early; I don’t regret it a bit. I was always a year younger than my classmates, but it never mattered much to me. I’ve got plenty of regrets, but that’s not one of them.